Day 2: Dark Side of Bruges Tour

I love free tours because they can often be booked at the last minute. The deal is, you pay what you want (often $10-$20 a person). Internationally I have had some excellent tours, and some not so good ones. I've always walked away learning something.

Our time in Bruges was limited to just one day. We didn't want to use the time when buildings were open to go on a two-hour walking tour, so we opted for the "Dark Side of Bruges" tour by Legends Tours.

Most of the year, the tour meets at the statue in the middle of the Markt Square. Once the Christmas Market is set up, there is a barricade around the statue and the area because very created. They sent an email directing us to meet just outside the walls of the market.

Our guide was Martin from Germany. He had a unique accent, which I could not place so I finally asked. His English was excellent. There was not a hint of German in it, but I'm pretty good at narrowing down where people are from based on their language patterns. Don has marveled (or tried to hide in embarrassment) when I've asked people if they are from Brisbane or Melbourne. Turns out Martin was raised by a British mother and they moved to South Africa when he was young. There was at least one other place where he picked up English. I could listen to him for hours. And, I suppose, we did.

Our tour had 13 people on it. It was supposed to be about twice the size, but many did not show up. That's what I mean about low stress -- we waited a few minutes, then kept going.

If we wanted the history tour, we should have signed up for the midday tour. The dark side tours give centuries of history in a five to ten minute compact lesson before moving on to murder and mayhem.

Seven hundred years ago in the Middle Ages, Bruges was a merchant city, the
financial center of Europe. It was one of the largest cities in the world (50,000 people) -- bigger than London (20,000 people) and Amsterdam (5,000). Due to climate change, the fortunes changed in Bruges. The canals filled with silt about 600 years ago.

We stopped on the 80 year old stone bridge to admire the view before settling into our first story for the night. This tour took us away from the tourist sites we saw earlier. 

We studied a statue of the Flemish primitive artist Jan Van Eyck.  

Bruges is so photogenic.

In 1233 Pope Gregory IX declared cats as satanic creatures, especially black cats. As a result they were drowned, thrown from high towers, and killed. As I type this, Kitty Mimi is snoozing on the other side of my laptop. Fortunately she can't read about what happened to her ancestors.

During the plague every third person in Bruges perished. The shipping industry brought rats on their boats. The Catholic church got rid of the predators of rats. The plague spread.

On that cheery note, we heard about a haunted house inhabited by Lord Eyck. His wife, Catherine, made dolls out of cloth. When Lord Eyck traveled, Catherine and their daughter, Mary would wait in the upstairs window waiting for him to return. They put dolls in the window to welcome him back from his travels to Florence.

One year he did not return. It was rumored he stayed in Italy and married a rich widow. His wife told her friends he had died. They continued to wait. After a couple of weeks, a new doll appeared in the window that looked a lot like Mary, and Mary had disappeared. If you look at the house, there is no entranceway. Years ago the school next year bought the property with the intention of expanding their kindergarten class. That was abandoned when the house was deemed to be haunted. The dolls are placed in an upper window to keep the house quiet.

Our next stop was St. Walburga church. The church is no longer in use, yet sometimes organ music can be heard coming out of it. The church was heavily damaged by a bomb in 1918. Our story dates back to 1477 and Mary of Burgundy, the Countess of Flanders who was married to Maximillian of Austria. Across the street was the best bakery. She tried everything to get the baker to release his recipes so her baker could replicate it. He refused to share his secret ingredient. In a tale straight out of Sweeney Todd, the secret ingredient was revealed when a prominent man went missing.

The problem with a night tour is the lack of lighting available. I was glad the earlier drizzling stopped or I'd be juggling an umbrella along with my notebook, pen, and cell phone camera.

We walked to the Jerusalem Chapel, which is a replica of the Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was a shame we were not there an extra day to be able to go inside the church. Instead of a cross, the church has a ball on top. Is this in honor of the pagan god of fertility Baal? Does it have to do with witches who danced around it in blue flames?

We transitioned to a story about the history of beer. In the 13th century, monks started to make beer. Beer was made by women starting in the 11th century, mostly widows and single women. Many of the symbols of witches date back to the attire of these early brewers. As happens in history, women were pushed out of the lucrative business. Eventually some were hunted as witches -- a practice that lasted from 1487  to 1681. Far longer than our Salem Witch trials.

Martin took us to one of the last buildings owned by the church to house poor people. The residents prayed three times a day for the souls of the wealthy. There used to be 46 such houses in Bruges, and one in Ghent. They feature a pelican, which is the symbol of sacrifice because of the legend that mama pelicans feed their babies bits of themselves so their young ones don't die, thus similar to the blood of Jesus Christ for us.

Bruges used to be surrounded by a wall. Over time, the wall came down. There are still four gates left. Alas, more time and we would have found them and photographed them.

As we talked about at the beginning of the tour, Bruges demise happened in the Middle Ages, especially during the plague. No one paid it much attention from about 1500-1900. That was their dark era. It was discovered in the 19th century and turned into a tourist destination. Unlike many places, Bruges was preserved in the past. The dirt roads became cobblestone streets. The Gothic facades were restored. The 2007 film In Bruges highlights this era. Most of the people on our tour had heard of the movie. Don and I need to look into this Irish gangster movie and reminisce about our trip. The movie spurred modern tourism, which we had already noticed with people taking Instagram-style photos throughout the city.

We walked past the former fish market, which is now a craft market. Don and I
had looked at the artists' work earlier in the day. It reminded me of a similar structure in Florence, Italy where merchants sell their wares. In that case, mostly leather goods.

Martin recommended House of Waffles, which was closed for the night. We went to its sister location in Ghent a few days later.

He guided us to the Torture Museum (also closed for the night) and described methods of torture. Often Spanish torture. This was a theme repeated on our next two Dark Tours (Antwerp and Ghent). 

We ended in front of the Christmas tree in front of the Basilica of the Holy Blood. Yes, the church has a piece of cloth they believe has Jesus's blood on it. Reminded me of the Shroud of Turin, which someone on the tour said was disproven based on the age of the fabric. The upper room is open for visiting each day from 12-4 pm. Alas, we would be back in Antwerp by the time it was open.

A few more pictures of Bruges at night because it is so magical.